In the field of architecture, and the associated fields of building materials and construction techniques, there has developed through the years a certain attitude towards design which is, in part, based upon the limitations associated with the particular building materials available. Steel, brick, steel reinforced concrete and wood are commonly used today for their structural integrity and, because their structural qualities are well known, it is also known that buildings which are constructed from steel, brick, steel reinforced concrete and wood all suffer from similar limitations. Some of these limitations include that fact that the production of buildings from traditional construction materials is energy intensive, especially when considering the total energy cost which may be assigned to a building beginning with the manufacture of the building material through the ongoing energy costs associated with the operation of the building. In addition, traditional construction materials are often wasteful of energy in their manufacture, have a high static load and are frequently in need of continuous protection from the elements, both before and after their inclusion into a finished structure. These elements may be natural or man-made and include fire, thermal and acoustical conductivity and corrosion.
Because of these limitations, classes of alternative building materials have been developed which attempt to address the concerns of both architects and construction engineers alike. However, of the materials commonly available to the architect for construction, glass as a building material has apparently, and unnecessarily, been limited in terms of its application. This may be due in part to its relatively complex physical and chemical behavior and also to the fact that glass is actually a family of materials rather than a single "conventionally understood" material, such as aluminum. In addition, historically glass has been associated almost synonymously with architectural transparency and light control so much so that its structural and behavioral properties have been subordinated in favor of these optical qualities. In the past when glass was treated as an element with structural integrity, dependency on supporting armatures of other materials was usually involved. This limited view of glass was exacerbated by the well understood brittle characteristics of homogeneous glasses.
By way of example, assemblies made of plate glass sheets partly supported by steel cable tension elements and steel or alloy bar compression elements have been used in the past to form a type of space frame. In addition, there have been examples of plates of sheet glass being bolted and glued together to produce fenestration assemblies of plate glass "lights" with plate glass fins which could support their own loads. Further examples include the 19th century "Glasshouses" in which wood, iron and steel were the structural load bearing components. However, only recently has glass actually been used as a load bearing material in construction. One such example are the designs from the 1930's by Guissepi Terragni in which glass was conceived as structural. Terragni's "Danteum" depicts transparent glass columns, although no technical or theoretical discussion of these glass elements accompanied this design. In addition, it appears that these designs were never, in fact, built.
Therefore it has been determined that the need exists for an improved building material which may be used to overcome the limitations of conventional building materials by having lighter structural elements, having a lower embodied energy, having a lower thermal conductivity, having a lower acoustical conductivity, having a higher resistance to corrosion, and by being economical to manufacture and use. Accordingly a composite architectural component has been developed using fiber reinforced and foamed glass to impart structural strength and to increase construction and form versatility.